Grand Theft Auto IV

Chris Livingston has already extolled the virtues of Grand Theft Auto 4's amazing #WatchDogsIV mod. For the uninitiated, it brings Watch Dogs style environment hacking into GTA's Liberty City. For a full round-up of what it enables, head on over to Chris's Mod of the Week post. For a small look into the type of chaos it supports, stay right here.

Being a child, the first thing I did on loading the game was to start a traffic jam:

So far, so Watch Dogs. But the Traffic Lights prompt reappears quickly after. I wonder...

Yup. Multiple prompts means multiple pile-ups, meaning I can stack this thing right up. Time to do that. Everybody, welcome to the jam.

What makes this so funny other than the obvious is that the cars in the crash accelerate every time I hit the prompt, pushing them deeper and deeper into the ultra-jam. Also, as you can see from the picture above, a man has spontaneously combusted.

That's probably not a good sign.

Nope, definitely not a good sign. We have reached peak jam. It is jam-a-geddon.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this tanked the game's framerate. My rig battled on regardless to bring you this dramatic re-enactment.

You can download #WatchDogsIV from here, and you probably should.

PC Gamer

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Mod of the Week: #WatchDogsIV, for Grand Theft Auto IV

Sep 1, 2014

Like me, you've probably spent dozens of hours in Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City, but often wish there was some way to cause a little destruction and mayhem. Finally, there is! The #WatchDogsIV mod summons the sullen Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs, and more importantly, brings along Aiden's awesome Phone of Hacking +4. Traffic lights, payphones, ATMs, security cameras, and those poles that shoot up out of the street: they're now yours for the hacking! The once utterly peaceful Liberty City is about to get flip-turned upside down.

Just about all the tricks up Aiden's futuristic trenchcoat sleeve are now at your disposal as you prowl the streets of Liberty City. Walk within range of a hackable object, and you'll get a little icon on your screen. Hold down the 'E' key, and the icon will be outlined. It works pretty much exactly as it does in Watch Dogs, right down to the little electrical tendrils that spread from Aiden's phone when he hacks something.

That public phone exploded! Thank god no one was using it for the last 10 years!

Naturally, triggering traffic lights is great fun, and dare I say it, causes even bigger and badder accidents than it does in Watch Dogs. You can also blow things up, though instead of steam fittings and electrical junctions, it's Liberty City's payphones that explode. (I know what you're thinking. Exploding payphones? That's utterly ridiculous: payphones don't even exist.) Those poles that pop out of the street work most of the time, and are great for keeping the cops off your tail when they come to investigate why everything is suddenly exploding.

Oh, LCPD. Will your humiliations ever end?

Speaking of the po-po, it seems like the entire Chicago policing system has been ported over from Watch Dogs. Commit a crime, and a nearby citizen may call the police on you. You'll hear the call taking place, and the eyewitness will be highlighted with an icon, allowing you to interfere before the 9-1-1 call is complete. If the call goes through, the police will be dispatched and your radar will show ctOS scanning for your location. The mod even has options to make the police better drivers and more accurate shooters, if you want to make things harder on yourself.

No more smashing cars yourself. There's an app for that.

There's more phone-foolery! You can now remotely activate car alarms like Aiden, though in Watch Dogs that was used to distract guards, and now it's mainly just useful for startling pedestrians. You can jump into security cameras, and use them to jump into other cameras, and set off other hackable objects while peering through the lens from a safe distance. And, while you can stop the trains, just like in Watch Dogs, there's not much point in doing so, just like in Watch Dogs. But, who needs to have a point? You have some new ways to terrorize the citizens of Liberty City, and that's its own reward.

Stop the train! No reason. Just wanted to see if I could do it. I could.

The mod makes you move like Aiden as well. When you walk, you'll stuff your hands in your pockets and keep your head down, which is the best way to avoid suspicion when you're a famous vigilante the entire city is after. There are new animations for giving you Aiden's awkward sprint, as well as his patented truncheon takedowns which can be performed on anyone you're standing near. There's also a blood-round-the-edges screen effect for when you take damage, which I guess was in Watch Dogs. I'm not sure. I was so good at that game I never took damage.

Beating you up for reasons that are unclear even to me!

I'm told that hacking an ATM will cause money to spray out of it, which will cause citizens to run over to collect it, which will naturally cause a huge fist-fight, which sounds quite amusing. I have to say, though, I drove around for ages and never spotted even a single ATM. You can also cause light fixtures to explode, scaring people, and overload soda machines, spilling cans everywhere. Basically, the mod lets you be a huge, destructive jerk in new and exciting ways, and that's what any good GTA IV mod should do.

Installation: Here's the page to download the mod, with a description of all its features and the control scheme. You'll need to use OpenIV to get the mod working, naturally. And, while the mod makes you run and act like Aiden, it doesn't make you look like Aiden. If you want his goofy trench coat and hat, you'll need to install a separate skin for it (I used this one).

PC Gamer

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E3's Greatest and weirdest moments

Jun 3, 2014

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is conference that is known for high points that shake up the gaming world, along with low points that can't be shaken from memory. Not to say all the conferences are triumphant or memorable, but each stood out in their own way.
Here are some of our favorite highlights over the years from the big event, and maybe we'll add on a few more after next week.

Shacknews

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Rockstar Publisher Weekend - Day Three

Mar 15, 2014

The Rockstar Publisher Weekend continues today with great deals on Rockstar titles! From now through Monday* pick up titles up to 80% off!

Today's Daily Deal features the Grand Theft Auto IV up to 80% off!

*All discounts end Monday, March 17th at 10AM Pacific Time.

Announcement

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Grand Theft Auto 5 character-swapping mod in the works for GTA 4 PC

Jul 29, 2013

The PC version of Grand Theft Auto 4 is unquestionably the best version of the game. Why? Mods. The still-active modding community has added a number of incredible features to Rockstar's open world. iCEnhancer, for example, makes the game look awfully pretty.

Rockstar has yet to announce a PC version of GTA 5, much to the chagrin of PC gamers everywhere. Of course, the modding community isn't going to sit still. In fact, someone's already working on retrofitting one of the sequel's new features back into Liberty City.

In GTA 5, you'll be able to switch between any of the three main characters at any time, no matter where they are in the city. GTA X Scripting (via Destructoid) is attempting to introduce that feature into GTA 4, by having 1, 2, and 3 hot-keyed to three different playable characters: Niko, Johnny, and Luis--the latter two being the stars of the Episodes from Liberty City DLC expansions.

When not being controlled, the two other characters will "wander around" and even evade the cops. It's an interesting tweak, one that will give PC gamers just the smallest taste of GTA 5.

Shacknews

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Grand Theft Auto DNA, part 2: the art of sandbox gaming

May 2, 2013

Editor's Note: In part 1 of Grand Theft Auto DNA, we explored how vehicles and driving physics evolved over the GTA series. Today, we discuss the role of sandbox environments like Liberty City and San Andreas.

Playing a Grand Theft Auto game is a lot like observing an ant farm. The AI-controlled citizens of Rockstar North's worlds drive around, obey traffic laws or blow red lights, loiter on the sidewalk to panhandle and gab with friends, and throw fisticuffs after getting into a fender bender at the intersection of Columbus and Jade. I've spent hours in each GTA sandbox just driving around, marveling at how alive each world feels.

When I get tired of people watching, I lift the nearest set of wheels and stir the ants into a tizzy. I make things happen. "I'm fairly certain we didn't make ANY progress on the main story line that entire night," Shacker atom519 said, recalling his first time playing 2001's Grand Theft Auto 3 with a group of friends. "Instead [we] just explored the city in awe while laughing our asses off as we punched random pedestrians for looking at us the wrong way. I vividly remember hearing the phrase 'Wait, you can actually do that?' multiple times from people watching us play."

GTA 3 set the bar for open-world games. That skyscraper off in the distance? You can drive there, climb to the roof, and snipe pedestrians until the boys in blue show up. That hooker working her corner? Pick her up, recharge your health using her oh-so-soothing services, then back over her when she gets out and reclaim your cash. If mowing down pedestrians gnaws at your conscience, you can put in an honest day's work shuttling ants around the city in taxi cabs or steal a black and white and chase down perps.

Players can take a break from rampaging across GTA's virtual cities and watch AI inhabitants go about their routines.

Rockstar's open-world juggernaut permitted players to tackle missions in their own way, too. "There's a mission where you have to kill a mob boss, and it was seriously kicking my ass," explained Shacker and former staff writer Jason Bergman. "So I trailed the guy and learned his pattern. He would get picked up by a limo and taken back to his house. I jacked a semitruck and parked it in front of his house, so the limo couldn't get in there. Then when it stopped, I came screaming down the street in another car, running over his bodyguards when they got out, one after the other. Then I just got out and shot the bastard."

Shacker MamiyaOtaru took a different tack to stage the same hit. "I blocked the entrance with a fire truck and lobbed grenades over it until everything blew up. Then I took off on foot down the cliff and along the beach, heart pounding. Awesome stuff."

In 2008, Rockstar North ushered its flagship series into HD with the release of Grand Theft Auto 4. Sporting breathtaking graphics, physics-powered characters and vehicles, and sharper AI, GTA 4's ant farm felt more like a living, breathing, real world than any GTA setting before it. That realism, so strong you could practically taste the hot dogs you buy from carts on the street, came with a downside.

In San Andreas, riding bicycles was more than just a method of transportation.

Antics like pedaling bicycles fast enough to outrace trains and raiding a military facility to lay your hands on a jetpack no longer fit in with Rockstar's focus on crafting a more mature, lifelike world. Instead, you threw darts, took dates to cabaret shows and out to eat, and went bowling. Other riveting activities included strip clubs and channel surfing on the TV. Odd jobs like stealing specific cars, assassinating NPCs, and vehicle missions returned, but most of them were variants on, or imports of, side missions we've been playing for 12 years. GTA 4 has a pretty face, but comparing its shallow pool of jaunts and junkets to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the benchmark for sandbox fun in the GTA universe, is like saying you prefer your local park to Disney World.

Every action I performed in San Andreas offered incentive to continue performing that function. Sprinting from the cops increased my ability to run greater distances without having to stop and catch my breath. Operating different vehicle types improved my handling of vehicles of that type. Buying properties, a carryover from 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, generated a limitless income stream, keeping me flush with cash.

Activities in GTA 4 exist just for the sake of making the sandbox feel full. Winning at bowling or darts offers no reward. Hanging with friends and courting the ladies grants access to perks like guns at discounted rates, car bombs, and helicopter rides, but entertaining NPCs so I can retain access to their perks feels more like a chore than a fun time. Rockstar excised the RPG-like stat upgrades from San Andreas, so there was no way to customize my character other than changing my clothes, a purely aesthetic alteration.

In short, Rockstar North chose to preserve its sophisticated world simulator and storyline at the expense of the player's ability to influence her character and the game world.

The logo in the bowling alley was the highlight of GTA 4's bowling minigame.

On September 17, Rockstar North will deliver Grand Theft Auto 5. Last December, Game Informer's cover story revealed that the game world is bigger than San Andreas, GTA 4's Liberty City, and Red Dead Redemption's Wild West combined, with plenty of wiggle room left over. The magazine also divulged details on the rides Rockstar built for its larger-than-ever playground: golf courses, a fully modeled ocean floor for players to explore, new vehicles like ATVs and mountain bikes, bank heists where players can switch perform different roles like sniper and getaway pilot by switching between the three main characters, and hobbies unique to one character or another.

That all sounds great on paper, but it's not enough for side attractions to simply exist. Even though Rockstar will once again prevent players from making changes that would dilute the personalities Rockstar's writers defined for GTA 5's leading men, the developer can still incentivize activities to make them feel worthwhile. Organize golf tournaments with increasingly large pots to encourage us to improve our game on the green, reward us for recovering valuable treasures and spotting exotic creatures under the sea, and escalate bank heists so players go from knocking off local credit unions to bringing down the virtual ant farm's biggest bank, with each job requiring more finesse and offering a larger payday.

GTA 5 promises the largest open world in the series to date.

Jacking cars and raising hell is the bedrock of any GTA game; no one's arguing that. Watching the world burn in GTA 4 was fun despite the dearth of other distractions. I don't mind the emphasis on realism, either. As much as I loved GTA: San Andreas, the game started showing its age a long time ago. The spirit of the game's design, however, is immortal, and remains unchallenged in the GTA series. Call on that spirit. Improve on it. Otherwise, the novelty of running around GTA 5's super-sized ant farm will wear off quicker than I would like.

"I think there is a definite ratio of realism to fun that leaned too hard toward realism in [GTA IV]," said Shacker Rauol Duke. "You kill 50 people on the drive from your place to some girl's apartment, kill 20 more on the way to the bowling alley, and then you have to play a s--t minigame. All the TV shows and radio stuff is great, but I want more stuff [to do] over having a Google Maps-accurate build of some city."

Shacknews

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Grand Theft Auto DNA, part 1: driving evolved

May 1, 2013

Editor's Note: In part 1 of our Grand Theft Auto DNA, we dissect the driving system in GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA 4 to understand how driving evolved over the course of those series, and how it should work in the upcoming GTA 5.

In August 2001, Sony's PlayStation 2 celebrated its first birthday with little fanfare. More a glorified DVD player than a hot-ticket game machine, the PS2 lacked a system seller, industry jargon for a game so popular that gamers plunked down hundreds of dollars on a console just to experience that one game. Two months later in October, Rockstar North filled the void with Grand Theft Auto 3, an open-world romp where players could hijack cars, splatter pedestrians, treat traffic jams like impromptu destruction derbies, and wage crime sprees.

GTA 3 wrapped its freeform gameplay in a story about gangs and betrayal, but Rockstar knew what gamers really craved. From the moment the introductory cut scene ended, GTA 3 handed players the keys to every automobile in sight and got out of the way. "I remember playing the first Driver game and wishing I could just get out and run around," recalled Shacker soggybagel. "GTA 3 literally blew my mind. It totally sold me on the PS2 and I recall spending hours playing with friends. We'd switch off by basically going on crazy crime sprees and then once we died we'd hand the controller to the next person."

Some vehicles in GTA 3, such as the police cruiser, opened up additional missions.

Released in 2002, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City added new types of luxury cars that fit right in with the golden sunsets and coastal routes tracing the open sea of a faux Miami. The most popular addition, however, was the motorcycle. Unavailable in GTA 3, motorcycles came in a mix of types from scooters the players could apprehend from pizza delivery boys to the high-end PCJ 600 that streaked down highways like purring bullets.

Rockstar crammed over 200 vehicles in 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and with good reason. Featuring not one, not two, but three cities connected by fully traversable countryside, San Andreas let players roam the massive sandbox in monster trucks, low-riders, new public service rides like the street sweeper, bicycles that the player could pedal fast enough to outrace trains, golf karts, stunt planes, airliners, and the jetpack, achievable only after raiding a military lab. Rockstar also added mechanic shops where players could pimp their rides with faster engines, sleeker bodies, and nitrous fuel that shot vehicles forward faster than a speeding bullet.

But numbers aren't really important here. What matters is the role vehicles play in a Grand Theft Auto game, and to pull the camera back even further, the role of travel methods in the increasingly large sandboxes crafted by developers like Sucker Punch, Avalanche Studios, and of course, Rockstar Games. Open-world games are getting bigger, and will continue to increase exponentially because real estate is perhaps the biggest, boldest bullet point in the open-world genre. Bigger cities! Wide-open country! Skies to swim! Oceans to cruise! Go anywhere, do anything, take in more virtual sunsets than you've seen in real life! But if traveling across all those virtual miles isn't fun, there is no game. The game is broken.

Vice City and San Andreas added more vehicles including planes and motorcycles.

Would you play inFamous if Cole McGrath couldn't grind on power lines, levitate using lightning, and climb buildings faster than a speeding Spider-Man? Would you bother maxing out your wanted level and seeing how long you could last in a GTA game before the five-oh, feds, and Uncle Sam struck you down? I wouldn't.

Less than five minutes after stepping into GTA 3's sandbox for the first time, I had carjacked a sweet ride, mowed down dozens of pedestrians, and cranked my wanted level up to three out of five stars. That's all I did for months because driving in the PS2-era GTAs was good, not-so-clean fun. I could feel the difference between a fire truck and a convertible, but most vehicles accelerated at a feather touch and turned on a dime. That's what I wanted. Driving in GTA is about having fun, not out-simulating Gran Turismo.

Grand Theft Auto 4 marked a high-definition overhaul for the series and a greater emphasis on realism when it launched for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2008. Harnessing the power of the Euphoria engine, Rockstar reimagined Liberty City and imbued it with realistic physics, animation, and artificial intelligence. Fueled by Euphoria, vehicles in GTA 4 handled quite differently. The glossy and aerodynamic Infernus sports car felt snappy while industrial rides like delivery trucks turned like an ocean liner. Every car required precision and care regardless of size. The days of flying through turns doing well over 90 were gone.

GTA 4 looked more realistic than ever, but many players didn't care for the weighty, more realistic driving physics.

My gut reaction to GTA 4's weightier driving was not a positive one. Frustrated, I found a populated sidewalk and thinned it out, cranking my wanted level up to three stars in no time. And that's when driving clicked. Rocketing down the highway with cops on my tail only to tap the handbrake, pull a 180, and leave police cruisers flailing in my rearview demanded my attention and spot-on timing. Failing to juggle speed and precise control ended with the boys in blue catching up and tossing me in the slammer or smashing into a barricade and shooting through my windshield like a stone from a sling. But the high I felt during each chase trumped any high-speed thrills from the GTA games of the last-gen console era, even if I was the one who ended up as road kill.

Shacker DM7 felt the same way, but noted that Euphoria tempted him to approach the game in a manner likely as foreign to most GTA players as it was to me. "I tried to obey all the traffic laws, stopping at lights, not going fast, really tried to play it straight. Then one mission had me running from the cops and during the chase I jumped the curb and hit a fat biker dude and he flew over my hood and over the car. I felt a little bad that I did that."

Driving in GTA 4 remains a polarizing issue. Either players adapted to it, as I did, or they missed the more accessible handling of the PS2 era of GTA. How, then, should Rockstar handle driving in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 5? Dan Houser, VP of creative over at Rockstar North admitted to Game Informer that cars felt "big and boatlike in GTA 4." The crack team of developers over in Scotland put GTA 4's physics under the knife, and judging by the recent character trailers, vehicles handle equally well in gang-banging, police-chasing mayhem and mild-mannered traffic.

The days of jetpacks are behind us, but that doesn't mean vehicles in GTA 5 can't balance fun and physics.

Of course, those trailers were heavily scripted. To please new fans and entertain gamers who still cling to their favorite PS2 Grand Theft Autos, Rockstar needs to walk the line between Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing. Add just enough weight to make every tap of the brakes and tug of the wheel count, while making driving as easy to pick up as it was in the old days.

In part 2 of Grand Theft Auto DNA tomorrow, we discuss the role sandbox environments play in GTA games, and why the city is as big a player as Tommy Vercetti or Niko Belic.

Shacknews

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Far Cry 3, Re-Imagined In Grand Theft Auto IV

Mar 21, 2013

This combination of mods for Grand Theft Auto IV makes the game look more or less like last December's Far Cry 3, and this machinima shared by RyderPL completes, or at least continues, the illusion.

It's… well, let's say the motion capture in Far Cry 3 is a touch above what GTA IV's game engine is capable of. Still, it's interesting to see one game running in another game like this. Vaas looks so… shiny.

(Thanks, Gaz.)

Kotaku

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Your Sunrise Can't Be Compared to These Time-Lapse Captures

Mar 4, 2013

Real-world sunrises get more intense as we get closer to spring—but they pale next to what we can find in games. The lovely time-lapse moments you can see above, from Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto IV, among others, create living, breathing worlds that you just can't wait to dive into.

Video Game Sunrises [YouTube]

Kotaku

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It's That Goofy Tow Truck From Cars, Destroying Liberty City

Feb 25, 2013

I have to say, while I enjoyed watching Woody from Toy Story wreaking havoc in Liberty City, I didn't really think I'd like watching Mater from Cars do the same. Come to think of it, I think I figured my relative enjoyment would be about on par with the difference between my enjoyment of Toy Story and Cars.

But hey, as it turns out, this video is pretty funny, if only because Mater somehow manages to leave a gravity-defying swath of destruction in his wake. The mod was uploaded by YouTuber Taltigolt, and created by SkylineGTRR34Freak.